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There is no mechanical or fluff requirement for a Paladin to follow a god.
You've quoted the most relevant paragraph yourself, but for a backup, from the same page:
Whether sworn before a god's altar and the witness of a priest, in a sacred glade before nature spirits and fey beings, or in a moment of desperation and grief with the dead as the only ...

(Background: I am also a Christian, along with several of the people in my gaming group.)
tl;dr -- The fictional god of your fictional world is not the God of our universe. Make the fictional god clearly distinct from our God. Figure out how much of what the party knows about that god is true.
Define what you mean by "God" in your game world.
Your game ...

Some very simple things first...Understand the differences between 'deity' and 'religion'. If your character sheet has the listing, 'deity' on it, it is not doing you any favors. Cross it out and replace it with 'faith' or 'religion'. A religion is normally the man-made, socially organized, interpretation of the place of the gods or philosophy in that ...

Considering only core and "core plus" (books that mention gods as part of the default setting)…
Rao may fit your needs admirably: the Flan god of reason, serenity, and peace, his followers avoid violence—except when absolutely necessary to defend the rationally-chosen course of action. As we well know from humanity's history, many conflicts arise from the ...

According to the wiki entry for Kanchelsis, deity for vampirism, there is an alternate creation myth that attributes the myth to an article entitled "Core Beliefs: Pelor" by Sean K. Reynolds, appearing in Dragon magazine #346.
It's not much, but I've found the text for "Punishment of the Undead" which describes the myth and redemption (Note: For citation ...

For a D&D reference I'll point you to the related Wikipedia article (it bears a good summary of the Raven's Queen back history).
For a real-world mythological reference, this post goes to a fairly good level of analysis on Greek and Norse mythologies.

There is not a canonical "D&D" answer. The answer differs per campaign world.
I know it's a little weird - the D&D 3 core books don't present themselves as a generic system per se; they hint at a shared cosmology with the gods, certain roles for the races, etc. that makes it seem like there's a larger world there. But it's just a hollow shell, to ...

No, there's no overarching "truth" about where the gods come from in the implied setting of D&D 3.5. It's left up to the DM to detail this (if ever), like usual with blanks in published settings.
However, if you dig into more specific D&D settings, you'll find creation myths that are more or less "the truth".
In Greyhawk (from whence most of ...

Nerull was a jerk who wanted to be king of the gods. The other deities were happy when the Raven Queen croaked him—happy enough to raise her to godhood in his place—but didn't want a repeat performance. So they tweaked her portfolio a little, and she later added a couple extra domains of her own.
To prevent her from becoming a tyrant in the ...

Sure.
4e really doesn't care. Matters of deities and alignments are really left entirely up to the DM. Talk to your DM about this and he may develop some narrative consequences to the change, however, there are no mechanical means nor consequences to make the change.
Also, as Oblivious Sage points out, you can totally change your alignment without changing ...

In 4th ed, the only real mechanical differences you get from following a specific god are that it determines the types of Channel Divinity powers available to a Divine character, and perhaps allows some additional feats, paragon paths or backgrounds.
Also, note that a Warpriest, an Essentials cleric, gets different powers based on the type of god (domain) ...

There is an optional rule called retraining from Ultimate Combat supplement. Keep in mind that this is from supplement and this rule is optional even if your DM actually applies that book, so consult your DM before using this solution.
Class Feature
Many choices you make about your class features can be retrained. It takes 5 days to retrain one ...

Buy Book of the Righteous, from Green Ronin. It is the most complete "create a whole living breathing religion" supplement ever produced for D&D.
Beyond that, take inspiration from the complexities of real world religions. The "Dwarves facing the sacred mountain" is a good one. Also remember Rl religions are not homogeneous, there are all kinds of ...

This is from Deities & Demi-Gods page 56
Deities do not have challenge ratings.Entities of this sort are so far above the realm of mortal heroes that determining their level of power in re
Relation to mortals becomes almost meaningless.
After that it also goes on to say...
If you feel the need to calculate a Challange Rating for a deity,try ...

Religion Does Provide A Better Life
Priests of the Sovereign Host often provide their services to the people, and attribute positive phenomena to the good gods of the pantheon. While there's no outright proof that the gods interfere in the world or even that they exist at all, their priests do still wield divine magic, and that's gotta account for ...

God is a being central to all creation, whose will, mind, and power are absolute and unrivalled, and yet so subtle that His existence and intentions are subject to doubt.
Use that to your advantage: Be vague. Your players are dealing with an incomprehensibly complex being; They can't really expect to understand the true depths of His psychology.
That ...

You seem to be on the right track (at least so far as RAW is concerned). Rules for creating a god are laid out in the SRD:
Most deities are 20 HD outsiders with 30 to 50 character levels as well. These additional character levels beyond an effective character level of 20th follow the rules for epic levels.
Avatars are created via a divine feat. The ...

Define the base tenets, not just the "spheres".
Define the nature of the religious "text". Is it
Oral Recitations (Hymns, songs)
Written texts (Scripture)
continuing revelation
Tradition
pure ritual
define who is in charge
ranks of clergy
who picks clergy
how long clergy are trained for
how the clergy promote within their system
define what is required ...

Assuming that you're setting agnostic, a forgotten realms Tormish paladin could certainly be holier-than-thou:
Torm:
Torm became the master of Celestia after the heroic self-sacrifice of the legendary Tyr (who perished decades ago when defending the upper realms against an overwhelming demonic incursion). He now shines as the beacon of pure law in the ...

Manual of the Planes has a large number of references and on page 60 give some details on her realm.
Open Graves: Secrets of the Undead also gives a lot of information scattered thorugh out it's pages. Page 22-23 has a whole section write up on her.

By RAW, you can cast Flame Strike all you want.
This kind of restriction is technically a roleplaying thing. By the rules, there is nothing to prevent you from casting Flame Strike as a cleric of Auril. The only restrictions on what spells a cleric can cast based on his chosen deity are alignment-based, not based on energy types. However, you're likely ...

According to the Wikipedia entry, they celebrate and perform rituals in the following manner:
Rituals
Hextorian services feature chanting, wind instruments sounding
discordant notes, shouts and screams, and iron weapons
striking against solid objects.
Hextorians swear mighty oaths in battle, such as "Strength in
victory!" "Mercy is for ...

I'm only familiar with the 4E version of Eberron, and the one book I read, The City of Towers. It sounds to me like you're talking primarily about the Sovereign Host religion, so that's where I'll focus my answer.
Religion Can Improve Your Life
I'm not sure why you say that 'the gods are silent'. I don't recall reading anything anywhere that gave me that ...

Nerull trapped and tormented souls in Pluton (a domain of the Astral Sea in the Points of Light setting), plotting to become the king of the gods... until his mortal consort killed him and acquired his portfolio.
[She was] a haughty mortal sorcerer-queen whose death brought her into Nerull’s realm. The Lord of the Dead sought to bind her to him as his ...

Adventurer Conqueror King System is also substantially focused on this kind of thing. You might look there for inspiration or consider switching over. Obviously, something to talk to your GM/Judge about.
Here's the company link. http://www.autarch.co/
Ultimate Campaign is a pathfinder product designed for that purpose. To boot, the rules are nicely ...

Unfortunately Not
The extraordinary ability rage granted by the prestige class eye of Gruumsh says
An eye of Gruumsh can fly into a rage just as a barbarian can, with all the same benefits and drawbacks (see page 25 of the Player’s Handbook). An eye of Gruumsh’s class levels stack with his barbarian levels (if any) for determining the number of times ...

Dugmaren Brightmantle seems like a good candidate. From the Wikipedia page:
Dugmaren Brightmantle is the dwarf deity of scholarship, discovery, and invention. Dugmaren shares the Dwarven Mountain on the Outlands with Dumathoin and Vergadain. Dugmaren appears as an elderly dwarf with sparkling blue eyes.
His domain isn't strictly light, but those ...